loving you's a bloodsport, fighting in a love war
by MostlyFandomTrash
Summary: the king glared; the queen grinned. - or, the king can not love her, not really.


**loving you's a bloodsport, fighting in a love war.**

/

(_Nothing is perfect, but your imperfections are quaint  
And your love is worth it and for that, I will wait_)

Her eyes were blue. They were blue, and they were shining, and they were fire, and they were narrowed at him in a way that none of the boys had ever (would ever) dared to even attempt. Her sword was grasped so loosey in her hand it would have been so easy (_too easy_) to snatch it from her and make it disappear, but he didn't.

And so, Peter let her keep the sword in her hand - the sword she had pointed at him before she had even turned around - and when he gave her the slightest of smirks (it didn't matter how he smirked at her, she always knew he was doing it), her loose grip tightened into something he might have a little trouble with. "What do you want, Pan?"

"Why do I always have to want something, Lilith?" When she scoffed, he just laughed.

/

(_And though you hate me when you have a turn  
I drive you crazy, but you always return_)

Laura perched herself on the edge of the bar's counter. It was time to be closing, but Leroy had yet to finish his basket of fries and the dark-haired girl was steadily getting more annoyed by the second. Just as she was about to ask him if he was done, _again, for the seventh time_, the front door opened and in stepped Parker Gold, the estranged nephew of Mr. Gold, his hands stuffed into the pockets of his jeans and he walked towards with all the confidence of a wolf stalking its shivering prey.

When he grinned at her she rolled her eyes and leaned over to snatch the fries from under Leroy's nose with a slight glare. "Time's up, get out before I get my dad, Leroy."

The man scoffed at her, muttering under his breath about the nerve of kids these days until she held out her hand for the money, which he begrudgingly handed over and then left the building. When the door clicked shut behind him, Laura sighed and turned to the older boy with a glare. "What are _you _doing here?"

"Good to know you missed me, too, _love_."

/

(_If I fall short, if I break rank  
It's a bloodsport, but I understand_)

She was glaring at him, and it wasn't an unusual sight in and of itself, but Pan was standing closer to her than any of the boys had ever seen. She was glaring and her hands were shaking and he was smirking and leaning forward.

Lilith's hands shot out and shoved him, harder than either of them expected, and it almost sent the boy-king to the ground. He caught his balance and his eyes suddenly narrowed at her, a stark contrast to the cruel playfulness he'd shown a few moments before. Her voice was quiet when she spoke to him, and he scoffed. "What was that?"

"Try that again, and it won't be my hands." Lifting her gaze to match his, her blue eyes had changed to a dark green (the _exact_ shade of the canopy of branches above the Lost Camp, he noted), but she isn't glaring. Her gaze is blank, like that of some of the flightless fairies he encountered in his early days on the island. "Try that again, and it'll be my knife instead."

He watches her walk away, and the boys have never seen Pan look like that (never seen him look like she really could stab him and he would gladly, obviously let her).

/

(_I am all yours, I am __unmanned  
I'm on all fours, willingly damned_)

He only comes on the days where she works alone, when she works without her brothers or her father. She'd ask to switch her schedule with Lance's, but he already has plans for his days off (and she isn't going be the reason her brother and best friend don't finally get their shit together) and that would be cowardly, besides.

If there's one thing Laura Rogers isn't, it's a coward.

Laura doesn't turn around when the door opens after closing time, fully expecting it to be Parker and not his best friend, Freddie. The blonde stands in the middle of the barroom, looking all the world like he belongs there with his leather jacket and the tattoo that crawls up from the end of his fingers to his shoulder blade (he's wearing his jacket, but she knows exactly where it ends, she can pinpoint it with her eyes, unfortunately). "Where's your brother?"

"That's none of your business, Freddie Hendricks. Get out of my bar."

Freddie tilts his head back (not enough to stare at the ceiling, but enough to make her feel smaller than she actually is), and he gives her a sly grin. "You didn't even ask which one I was looking for."

"I don't need to." Lance can't know that Freddie was looking for him, not now. It isn't fair to him. "Lance isn't here, and Brent doesn't like you. What do you want with either of them anyways? Or, are you still doing Parker's bidding?"

Freddie just laughs.

/

(_Loving you's a bloodsport  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah_)

Pan came back from his gathering trip with hands covered in blood from things she doesn't know if she wants to know about, and makes a straight beeline for the Lagoon. From her place next to the fire, where she's making sure the hog a few of the boys hunted won't burn, her gaze follows him as he makes his way through camp and ignores the boys who call his name.

If she knew it wouldn't get her slapped, or worse: locked up, Lilith would gladly follow the boy-king (what she doesn't know is that he wouldn't slap her lock her up, what he would do is push her in the water and start a game of _hide and seek_ and make sure that he's the only one that finds her).

Instead, the only Lost Girl got up from her place next to the fire and walked over to the few boys who had trailed in behind their new king. They're younger than usual (Pan doesn't bring weak boys to the isle, not unless he knows they'll get stronger) and for a moment, a short moment, she leans down and smiles. "Welcome to Neverland. I hope you like hog for dinner."

/

(_Fighting in a love war  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah  
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah_)

The only thing worse than being cornered by Parker or Freddie in a bar after hours is being cornered by Parker or Freddie in a bar during your shift, as Laura finds out a few days later when the former of the two casually leans up against the counter while she's fixing drinks. "You're not old enough to be in here right now, Parker."

"You act like you're legally old enough to work here, Laura." The lighter haired boy responded in the same condescending tone she'd used on him. She only scoffed and grabbed a set of glasses her older brother slid down the counter and put them away.

"You wanna talk to me? Try it again when I'm off shift and we'll see." Laura didn't want to talk to him, now right now (maybe not ever), especially with her father watching them with a raised eyebrow and a few choice words on his tongue. "Now, get out of here before my dad makes you."

The boy turned his gaze to look for the bar's owner and found himself being stared at right back. "I'll talk to you later, then."

For a moment, she watched him leave, but the moment was broken as James Roger's hand came down on her shoulder. "You all good, lass? Shall I go after him?"

"Dad, no. I'm fine, let me handle him, please."

"Whatever you want, Laura." The older man paused for a few seconds and his daughter turned to raise her eyebrow at him. "I can't say the same for the boys, though."

"I'll handle them, too, then." Her father only laughed and left her to serve some more drinks.

/

(_Although you love me, sometimes we're mean  
Things can get ugly, but we're still a team_)

He'd only been inside the treehouse he had built for her three times.

The first time, Pan had shown it to her. He'd grabbed her almost gently by the wrist and yanked her through the under canopy of dark green treetops and tried not to notice how she kept looking up at the specks of bright blue sky above them (he didn't comment on how her eyes were the exact same shade) until they reached the edge of the cliff where the house rested, far above the lagoon and the deadly mermaids that lived there. The first time, she didn't hate him yet, not as much as she did now. The first time, she was almost. . . happy.

The second time, Pan had been angry. He had shoved her so hard against the trunk of the oak tree that for a few seconds he was almost afraid that it would fall over. Lilith looked like she was going to cry and she looked like she wanted to shove him back, over the edge and into the lagoon (the mermaids wouldn't hurt him, they both knew that, but he would surely hurt her), but he was yelling too loud and too fast and she did not want to invoke his wrath any further than she already had (how she had done that, she wasn't sure). The second time, he'd grabbed her by the arms and pushed her inside and sealed the door with whatever magic he could muster up at that moment. The second time, he was furious with her, and she didn't know why.

The third and final time Peter Pan entered her treehouse, it was storming. Flashes of lightning helped to illuminate the interior of the room, all the things she had collected over the years she spent trapped on this hellhole of a kingdom he ruled (he looked over the jars of crab shells and mermaid scales and colorful rocks that lined the shelves with only little reaction; it was the other things that invoked a reaction from him) - the set of pipes he never bothered to steal back hanging from the wall above what used to be her bed, the various small knives and daggers scattered around wherever she could put them, the torn eye patch and broken spyglass she'd pocketed off one of the pirate ships that sometimes passed through their realm (only when he wanted them to, of course); these were the things that made him pause, made him stop to pick them up and then put them back down again before he did something he might regret (_something else_, Pan reminded himself bitterly, _something else I might regret._) The third time, she was gone. The third time, Lilith had left him and there was nothing he could do but wait and hope that she would return.

/

(_We are an army, that breaks from within, but  
That's why we're stronger, and that's how we'll win_)

The very moment the curse broke, there was a certain laughable irony in how the pair of them looked to onlookers (him, seemingly frozen in place with his hands against the wall near the crown of her head; her, breathing hard and staring disbelievingly up him with eyes so blue he swore there were an ocean's depth to them). Slowly, his hand traveled down to graze his fingers across her cheek and she jerked away as if by instinct.

"Lau- Lilith. . ." He broke off, his voice lower than she thinks she's ever heard him before. "Lilith, I'm so sorry."

Her breathing didn't slow down as she ducked from under his arms to stand away from him. "No. No, you don't get to be sorry, understand? You didn't do anything but watch me leave, this is not your fault. . . but, how do we get home, Peter?"

The former boy-king of the Isle of Dreams (_the Isle of Nightmares_) paused for a moment and then he shook his head very slowly. "I don't know if. . . I don't know if we can get home. . ."

"Of course we can, we can always get home." His former queen merely gave him the smallest of smiles.

"How do you know?"

"Because. As long as I believe in you, and you in me, then we can do anything we'd like. It's apart of the rules."

/

(_If I fall short, if I break rank  
It's a bloodsport, but I understand_)

The first thing he noticed when her fingers closed around her wrist was the almost unnoticeable strike of electricity that went through his body. The second was where she was leading him.

His voice was low again when he leaned down to hiss protests against her ear. "What are you doing? He'll kill me before I step foot in that building, you know that just as well as I do."

"Despite the. . . _strained_. . .. relationship you have with your son, he is quite possibly the only being in all of Storybrooke who can get us to where we need to go. It was his curse that brought us here, therefore, it must be him who can get us out."

He agreed with her, and they both knew it; no matter the soft stream of curses that were coming from his mouth at the very idea of entering the one place he was bound to be killed on sight, he agreed with her. This could possibly be their only chance to go home (to go back, to the Isle, back to the way things were before she'd been forced to leave the first time).

He didn't drop dead the moment his feet touched the threshold, and for a few moments, he was glad of it. Good things never last in this town, though, and he should've known this wouldn't either.

/

(_I am all yours, I am unmanned  
I'm on all fours, willingly damned_)

Her eyes were blue, the first time he saw them. They were as light as the sky during the middle of the day when she got excited, and they were as dark as the ocean during a particularly nasty storm when she was upset. They were blue the first time he saw them, and he decided that blue might as well be his favorite color on her.

And, then they were green. Her eyes turned green the very first time she got seriously mad at him - when he pinned her against the tree and she shoved him so hard that he might have fallen down, when she threatened to stab him with one of her knives if he ever laid his hands on her again, her eyes were green. He realized that he couldn't decide.

But now, as the dagger that had possessed his son for so many, long and tiring years before now and would continue to possess him many, many years after this moment had passed, he saw her eyes were a curious mix of both colors - the light blue fading into the dark blue, which then melted itself into a dark green. He watched as the look in her eyes crumbled yo match the despair on his face as the smoke swirling around him suddenly obscured her from his view.

Just before the smoke completely closed the father and son pair in and they began to fade away, he heard her shout his name in a tone of voice he desperately hoped he would never have to hear come from her mouth again.

"_Peter!_"

/

**fin.**


End file.
